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Sale 122
Lot 1703
Great Britain. Sovereign, 1827. S.3801; Fr-377; KM-696. Weight 0.2355 ounce. George IV. Bare head left. Reverse; Crowned shield. PCGS graded EF-40. In special PCGS Ship of Gold holder which contains One Pinch of Gold Dust recovered from the S.S. Central America treasure.
Special PCGS number 674277.40/35474736. Estimated Value $1,000 - UP
The political situation in Great Britain was thrown into some degree of turmoil in 1827. Not only had the always poor health of the unpopular George IV begun to fall into a steep decline, but Robert Banks Jenkinson, the Earl of Liverpool and the Prime Minister who had guided the United Kingdom through the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna that ended them, retired from Whitehall after being struck down by a cerebral hemorrhage in February 1827. George Canning was chosen to succeed Liverpool as the new Prime Minister on 10 April 1827. This appointment offended both Arthur Wellesley, the famous Duke of Wellington who had been named Commander-in-Chief of the British Armed Forces in January, and Sir Robert Peel, both of whom considered themselves better candidates. Their refusal to work with Canning effectively split the Tory party into two hostile camps known as the High Tories and the Canningites. After only 119 days in office, Canning fell ill and died on 8 August 1827. To this day he still holds the record for the shortest term of a British Prime Minister.
At the same time that British Parliament suffered from the upheavals attendant upon the frequent changes of Prime Minister and factionalism, 1827 marked the first year of direct British involvement in the ongoing Greek War of Independence (1821-1829). Whereas previously Great Britain had called upon both the Ottoman Empire and the Greek rebels to cease hostilities, on 6 July, Britain, France, and Russia signed the Treaty of London, which demanded the creation of a Greek state through mediation of the European powers. Trusting in its overwhelming naval power to crush the rebellion in Greece, the Ottomans refused to accept the treaty. Although he was ordered to use force only as a last resort, on 20 October 1827, Admiral Edward Coddington and the British Mediterranean fleet incited a battle with the combined Turkish and Egyptian fleet at Navarino that resulted in the annihilation of the Ottoman navy. This battle, which was the last to be conducted by ships entirely under sail, had the effect of guaranteeing the survival of the fledgling Greek state, but was viewed as a diplomatic atrocity in London.
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